Page 110 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Wilson One-Handed which

Brought in a Bounty of One Thousand Dollars

Behind, at the rear of the exhibit, at the far end of the alcove, hung a heavy drapery. Pendergast drew this aside to reveal a wall of bare wooden boards. He inspected the boards, pressed a small knothole, then the entire wall. It opened inward to reveal a small but deep closet with a padlocked metal door in the back. Closing the wooden partition behind him, he approached the padlock, removed his set of picks, worked on the simple lock for a moment, and then discarded it. Pulling open the door, he exposed a staircase going down into a blackness that exhaled dust, mold, and chemicals.

He paused. He had already deduced, from old building plans and his own mental re-creation, where this secret entrance must be. If his chain of deductions continued to be accurate, it was down this stairway that Mary Greene would be found—not in Leng’s mansion on Riverside Drive, but somewhere in this warren of subterranean tunnels.

The mansion on Riverside would be a dangerously inconvenient prison. Pendergast also knew that, in his own timeline, Leng had disposed of Mary’s body in the coal tunnel below Shottum’s Cabinet of Curiosities, along with many other victims. Therefore, she must have been kept alive down here before her vivisection: transporting her dead body from the uptown mansion would not only be an annoyance, it would involve unacceptable risk. She was likely at this very moment imprisoned in some fetid cell, while Leng fattened her up on a special diet necessary for the successful surgical extraction of her cauda equina—essential for the production of the Arcanum that would, when perfected, prolong his life.

He slipped out of his pocket a 1,000-lumen tactical flashlight, while with the other hand he drew his single most accurate and dependable sidearm: a Jim Hoag Master Grade Colt 1911. He probed the stygian darkness with his flashlight and ventured down the staircase.

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AT THE BOTTOM OFthe stairs, Pendergast’s bright beam revealed a circular chamber forming the hub for three stone tunnels, crudely cut and mortared, streaming with damp. He switched off the light and waited, listening intently. He could hear the faint dripping of water and the distant, muffled hum of machinery, but there was no sound of human presence.

These tunnels had been constructed almost a century before beneath what had been Cow Bay, to serve as part of the city’s waterworks. In the intervening years, Cow Bay had been filled in and become part of the Five Points. The waterworks eventually could not keep up with the growth of the city and was shut down in 1879 after the opening of the Central Park Reservoir. The Cow Bay Waterworks and its service tunnels were then bricked up and sealed.

But not for long. Leng had secretly reopened the tunnels and converted them to his own use. He had connected the waterworks passageways to the abandoned coal tunnel underneath Shottum’s Cabinet, which in turn was linked to the secure basement staircase Pendergast had just descended—a connection Leng had discovered from perusing old plans, unknown to even Shottum himself. It had become Leng’s private entryway into a self-contained world underneath the slums of the Five Points.

The old coal tunnel, with its numerous storage alcoves, proved the perfect place for Leng to seal up the deceased victims of his surgical experiments. In the adjacent waterworks tunnels, he had retrofitted a laboratory and—Pendergast surmised—also created cells for victims he or Munck seized from the out-of-the-way alcove in Shottum’s Cabinet. Pendergast also knew that a number of these victims had proven unsatisfactory. Some had relatives who inquired into their disappearance; others were tubercular or otherwise diseased. Leng needed healthy young stock, with no prying family…and so in 1880, as he prepared to move all surgical work from his upstairs digs at Shottum’s to these subterranean spaces, he also turned to a new source of victims: the Five Points Mission and nearby House of Industry. There, he had set himself up as a consulting physician and alienistpro bono publico, where he had his pick of orphaned girls without families, selecting those who both met his requirements and would never be missed.

In Pendergast’s own timeline, Leng—after taking Mary—had learned to his surprise that shedidhave a family: a sister, Constance, and a brother named Joe. This was why Leng had hunted down and captured Constance after he had vivisected her sister. Joe had by then been killed and no longer posed a threat. But that was in their parallel multiverse; here, his own Constance had arrived and disturbed the timeline, intent on saving her siblings and revenging herself on Leng. As a result, he could no longer count on history unfolding as he expected.

He turned his Defender flashlight back on at its low, 5-lumen setting, allowing only the tiniest ray to illuminate the way forward. He knew that, while Munck may or may not be busy elsewhere, Leng could have other assistants lurking down here as well. And it was entirely possible Leng himself might be in his secret laboratory or someplace within these corridors. He had to proceed with the utmost caution.

As he moved, spiders and centipedes, disturbed by his presence, scurried away from the light, sometimes dropping to the floor with a soft pattering noise and skittering about his feet. Puddles of fetid water lay here and there among the stones, some wriggling with tiny albino eels. The sound of distant machinery grew louder, groaning and echoing through the damp spaces.

The first tunnel he took wandered about before terminating in an old iron headgate, left over from the obsolete waterworks and rusted shut. He backtracked. A second tunnel soon brought him to a riveted iron door, also padlocked. He extinguished his light and listened at the door, but there was no sound from beyond. Both lock and hinge were free of rust and well oiled—perhaps this was the entry he hoped to find. He silently picked the lock and set it aside. Then he thrust open the door with his foot and panned back and forth with both flashlight and weapon.

His beam revealed a short stretch of tunnel ending in a brick wall, which had itself been broken through, the bricks neatly stacked to one side. He crept up to the opening and shone the light in, gun at the ready. He started with recognition as the beam illuminated what lay ahead—the infamous coal tunnel beneath Shottum’s.

Of the dozen alcoves on either side of the tunnel, two-thirds had been freshly bricked up, while stacks of bricks and bags of mortar beside the ones that remained open indicated work ready to be done when fresh victims arrived.

He knew that each bricked-up alcove contained three victims, which made a total of twenty-four killings so far in Leng’s ghastly series of experiments—he knew, because he had seen all this before, in his own timeline in New York, excavated and exposed to daylight more than a hundred yearsafterit had been used as a catacomb.

Twelve more bodies were to come before the niches were fully occupied—if Leng were allowed to continue.

But he would not be allowed to continue.

The alcove that had, in his own timeline, contained Mary’s body was still empty.

As revealing as all this was, it was not his goal. Pendergast backed out of the tunnel and retraced his steps, taking the third and final tunnel. It, too, ended at a padlocked iron door, again with well-oiled hinges and lock. On the dirty floor, Pendergast saw evidence of recent comings and goings—tracks of shoes and the wheels of a cart.

Once again, he picked the lock and threw the door open, panning his weapon from right to left. The air in this tunnel was fresher than in the others, and past the locked doorway the walls and floor were relatively dry and clean. He paused to listen, but again could pick up no sound of human presence beyond the wheezing machinery, which he now surmised might be a primitive airflow system.

He sensed he was nearing his goal. Strange that he had seen no evidence of activity or a guard on watch; but then again, Leng could have no suspicion that he, Pendergast, was here—or that he even existed. Just as he had no reason to think anyone would stumble across this hidden lair beneath the Five Points. While Leng was preternaturally intelligent and suspicious, he could not possibly deduce that people from the future, his own descendant Pendergast among them, had come to stop his experiments—and kill him.

As he moved down the tunnel, Pendergast came across a prison cell with a barred door; directing the light within, he saw a stone bench for sleeping, a chamber pot, and a single book, swollen from the damp. A tin plate of old food lay on the floor, and his beam, sweeping over it, disturbed a pack of rats who backed off with bared teeth. Next to this was another cell, and then another: a row of them, all empty but showing signs of recent occupation. Obviously, they had been holding areas for Leng’s victims—in the days or weeks before they had perished under his blade.

…But where was Mary? Shehadto be imprisoned somewhere down here. It was inconceivable Leng was keeping her at his Riverside Drive mansion—and surely she wasn’t yet on the operating table, being vivisected…

He quickened his pace. The very last cell in the corridor had a solid iron door instead of bars, and again it was padlocked. This door was newer than the others and looked recently installed. The padlock quickly yielded and he eased open the door, surprised to find light shining out from the widening crack.

He glanced in—then froze in surprise.

Hardly able to believe his eyes, Pendergast advanced into a room unlike any other in this foul abattoir: a richly furnished chamber with velvet wallpaper; globes burning brightly with gas; a table and chairs with writing paper, pens, and ink; a sofa covered in silk; a bookcase of fine editions; and sporting prints of horses and dogs on the walls. The rumble of fresh air came from a grate in the ceiling. At the far end stood a canopy bed draped in silk—and the shape of a person, presently sleeping under the covers.

Sothiswas where Leng was keeping Mary while he fattened her up for his next harvesting. A clever kind of concealment, indeed.

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